St. Thomas of Canterbury - Angela Gilhen - A day out in Holy Island 1980s

Angela Gilhen

A day out in Holy Island

This photograph was taken by Angela Gilhen in the 1980s. The exact year isn't recorded, though the clothes suggest the middle to later part of the decade. Everyone in it was identified by Angela.

Father Keoghan is the priest, standing in the centre of the back row.

A day on the island, as it might have gone

We don't know what this group actually did once they crossed the causeway, so what follows is imagined. A picture of how a day like theirs usually unfolded, offered for fun rather than fact. So here we go on what they might have done.

(1) Michael Gilhen

(7) Eileen Felgate

(2) Rachel Rouse

(8) Mrs Rouse

(3) Rachel Gilhen

(9) Mrs Mathieson

(4) Father Keoghan

(10) Paddy Emm

(5) Helen Gilhen

(6) Paul Felgate

What might have happened

A day on the island, as it might have gone

Nobody wrote down what this group did on the day, so none of what follows is a record of the trip. It is only a picture of what a day like theirs might have held.

Perhaps they set off from Billingham early in the morning, by car or in a minibus, with flasks and packed lunches and a long drive north up the coast ahead of them. The island can only be reached when the tide is out, so perhaps one of them was put in charge of the crossing times, watching the clock and making sure they reached the causeway while the road was clear of the sea.

Once across, perhaps there was a Mass, in one of the island churches or out in the open air. Perhaps the children ran up and down the sand dunes, rolling back to the bottom and climbing straight up again. Perhaps a ball came out and there was a game on the flat grass, with some of the grown-ups joining in.

Perhaps, too, they spent a while at the old priory. Benedictine monks kept the hours of prayer there for centuries and helped hold the life of the island together, until the Reformation under Henry VIII closed the house and turned them out. Perhaps the group stood quietly among the ruins and said a prayer for the Catholics of the past who had worshipped on that ground long before them.

And perhaps, at some point, there was a picnic. There is nowhere to hide from the wind on Holy Island, so perhaps they found what little shelter they could behind a wall or a car, and ate anyway. Perhaps a paper plate made a break for freedom the moment it was set down and had to be chased across the grass. Perhaps a sandwich was opened, given one good gust of sea air, and handed back with a fresh coating of sand nobody had asked for. Perhaps the flask lids blew off, the serviettes were long gone, and somebody's carefully packed cake arrived looking as though it had been sat on. And perhaps, wind and sand and all, it was still remembered as one of the best picnics they ever had.

Then perhaps the day wound down as these days usually do. A last look at the sea. The youngest ones asleep before they were halfway home.

If you were on this trip, or you remember someone talking about it, we would love to know what really happened that day. Please get in touch and help us fill in the story behind the picture.

The story above is inspired from the photo. Make the story real. Add your memory

What is on Holy Island, and why it matters to Catholics

Lindisfarne is often called the cradle of Christianity in the North, and the claim is fair. In 635 the Irish monk Aidan came from the monastery of Iona at the invitation of King Oswald of Northumbria, and was given the island as the base for his mission. He founded a monastery there and set about converting the pagan Northumbrians, and the community grew into an international centre of learning. From that small beginning the faith spread across the whole of the North East.

The island's greatest son is St Cuthbert, monk, bishop and hermit, who died in 687 and whose body was later found undecayed. His shrine became one of the most visited in medieval England. When Viking raiders sacked the monastery in 793, in what is usually counted the first great Viking attack on these islands, the monks eventually fled carrying Cuthbert's coffin. They wandered for generations, rested for a long spell at Chester-le-Street, and finally settled his remains at Durham, where they lie today. That coffin journey is still walked as a pilgrimage.

For our own diocese the link is direct. St Cuthbert is a patron of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, alongside Our Blessed Lady Immaculate. The wider family of Northern Saints connected to this soil includes Aidan, Bede, Hilda, Wilfrid, Oswald and Benet Biscop. The Lindisfarne Gospels, that astonishing illuminated manuscript, were made on the island around the year 700 in honour of Cuthbert.

A visitor today still sees a good deal of it. The ruins of the medieval priory, a Benedictine house refounded from Durham after the Norman Conquest and pulled down at the Reformation under Henry VIII. The parish church of St Mary the Virgin, standing on the site of the earliest Saxon church. Lindisfarne Castle, a Tudor fort later turned into a country house by the architect Edwin Lutyens, out on its crag at the far end. Offshore lies tiny St Cuthbert's Isle, cut off at high tide, where the saint kept his first hermitage before retreating further out to the Farnes.

The Catholic thread on the island itself runs through St Aidan's Church. It was first built in 1957 and extensively refurbished between 2005 and 2007. More recently it gained a real diocesan treasure. In 2025 the Bishop's private chapel, with its carved altar, reredos and panelling, was installed there, and Bishop Stephen Wright called Holy Island the most fitting home for it. A small building, but a living connection between the diocese now and the place where its first bishops began.

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